


Simple in the Moonlight

by cecilkirk



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Canon, M/M, Ryden, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-03 13:12:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6611893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilkirk/pseuds/cecilkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>what's so simple in the moonlight / now is so complicated</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by ["Lua" by Bright Eyes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSBs-hiapo4)

It hadn't been my idea, but I went along with it anyway.

Never took him to be a party-goer. He seemed...holy, somehow. Like being as serene and stoic as he was meant he'd never done anything reckless and fun and really fucking stupid like this before. As if enjoyment and intelligence were mutually exclusive.

They aren't for him. I wish they weren't for me.

He notices me shivering. He doesn't say anything and we continue, kicking the rain that puddles around our ankles and soaks our clothes. You'd think the rain would scare away city life, but it never did. Nothing as insignificant as a force of nature could bog down this calibre of business.

I shiver again. This time, he doesn't even look in my direction.

I hadn't meant to shiver. I hadn't meant to react publicly to the discomfort I was feeling, but it was evidently a reflex. An innate call for help. A yearning for something so desperately needed I couldn't keep the most basic parts of me from reaching out.

I pull my drenched coat around me tighter. It's counter intuitive. As another shiver wracks through my body, I berate myself for being so needy.

Ten blocks ago Dan had tried to get a taxi. Six blocks ago I had tried. I am pretty sure they saw us. I do not know whether to feel anger or admiration. I wouldn't stop for us, either.

Dan begins to walk more quickly, shuffling through the little ocean at our feet. This is familiar to him; he knows where we're going now. For once in my goddam life, I let someone lead me.

This was the house of some star, apparently, some big-name actor I've never heard of. But that didn't matter to me. I didn't give a fuck at all where we were going, just what would be on the other side of the door: drugs, alcohol, and sweaty bodies eager to lose themselves to physical ecstasy. No one would remember the address, only the residue of heroin and whiskey thick in their blood. I had never been one to remember faces, up until--

"Shit, man, you look like fucking shit."

I blink at him.  _We both do, you fucking idiot_ , I want to say. I bite my tongue and plan to wash down the blood between my teeth with cocaine and vodka and the skin of a stranger's throat.

It'll all be behind me soon enough.


	2. Chapter 2

I am on top of the world: my apartment is on the top floor.

Evidently, it's morning. Evidently, my blinds are too fucking flimsy to keep out the sun very well. They're pathetic, really. Can't keep out light worth shit.

At first I tried to pretend it didn't bother me. I then tried to act like it was the sunlight that made it hard to stay in my bed.

It was all fucking pointless. If he saw me now, he'd laugh. I wouldn't blame him.

Somewhere in the world, someone is in my exact position. This only makes me feel lonelier.

Somewhere in the world, he is enjoying his morning. Woke up with the love of his life next to him, I bet. Probably enjoying a coffee on the porch, dwelling in the dawn of a new day and settling in the beginning of his new and brighter life.

I head to my kitchen to make a pot and choke it down with his ghost.

Still across the table, too. That's where I see him. That's where I can't sit. Haven't sat there, not since--

I let out a choke of pain. The mug doesn't shatter. I think I'm something close to grateful.

I stare at the pot. Done, now, ready to be consumed. Against my better judgment and against my free will, I can see him. Right here, the morning after that night. Post-sex glow lively and electric on his face, his arms, his grin. That morning, I'd slept perfectly despite my shitty blinds.

Almost as if the blinds weren't the problem.

I grin to myself. I think it's self-depreciating. I know it's fucking pathetic.

And, suddenly, that's it. That's all it takes, evidently. The throbbing in my foot escalates, and the sight of the coffee makes me nauseous. I dump the pot down the sink, watching it briefly taint the entire porcelain bottom before leaving. Completely encasing, then gone. I wish it were that easy.

For him, it had been.

Evidently.

Another switch flips within me. I am too sad to cry. That was fucking pathetic in itself, and I wished I could've laughed it off as being melodramatic. I wish it had been an overreaction.

I would have preferred pain. I wish I could have just collapsed into tears and moved on with my life a half hour later. I'd tried that the first few months, but the pain was gone. Loneliness wasn't crippling anymore; it was now a hum. There were no more knives between my ribs so much as there were constant kicks to the shin.

I hadn't cried in years. Not because the pain was gone, because it wasn't, really.

Because now I'd adapted to it, and now it would never end.

And without an end, there was no beginning. There were no more bursts of sadness to climb over. It now filled every second of my fucking life. I couldn't pry him from my skin. I couldn't lose his skin under my fingers. I couldn't forget how he kissed with admiration and deliberation.

He wouldn't leave me alone, even when he had.

I look at the table; I look out the window above the sink and down to the cluttered sidewalk below. These people were beneath me: I am on top of the world.

I wished he was down there. Even if he were, he wouldn't be one of those people.

I was on top of the world, but he could never be beneath me. Even when I wanted him to be.

Even when the bruised inside of my ribs begged him to be.


	3. Chapter 3

I should've remembered it, but I didn't, really. I remember it peripherally. When I reach with sweaty hands to take off my clothes, I think of that night. When I hear my own thick breath caught in my lungs, I think of that night.

As I let the early morning light soak my bones, I think of the morning after.

The aftermath had been so much more memorable.

The mug now on the floor had been yours. You should've taken it with you. You also should've fled that morning. I remember being confused, waking up and seeing you next to me. But you hadn't been. You were smiling. You had kissed me like you loved me.

I couldn't register elation. I was too shocked.

I wasn't in love with you; I'd decided I was done with that. It had just been a fling, that night, just a brief reliving of our past. Wasn't supposed to do anything beside satisfy our curious nostalgia. But you let it become more than that.

You made coffee that morning. You strutted around in your underwear like you owned the place, and I took it as the wrong kind of hint--the implication that you wanted to live with me, abandon everything, and start fresh. 

I shoved that wish away quickly. When I saw you'd brought your own mug, I was hesitant to shove it away again.

I remember feeling like I was living on borrowed time, that morning. I waited every second for you to leave, and it was agony. I knew the faster you were out of my life again, the better off I'd be. 

You stayed for hours. We talked until our throats ran dry.

I knew I'd never be happy again once you left.

When I came into the kitchen a few minutes after you had, you kissed me and looked at me with eyes I didn't understand. I asked what was wrong.

"You still have a heavy heart," he said. "I can feel it when we kiss."

The feeling of unraveling in my chest, the itch in my fingers to touch your skin and never stop, the distant threat of tears...

I fell in love with you all over again.

You said something about time, after that. Something about how the love you sold me in the evening could exist in the morning, and shit, did I want to believe you. You weren't lying to me; I know what prevarication looks like on you. You just hadn't realized it would never be like that again, like it was before. Once again, I knew the outcome before you. Once again, your optimism blinded you.

I stared at your wedding ring the entire time you spoke.

We weren't meant to be.

 

 

 


End file.
